Your hard drive has failed and needs to be replaced immediately for the notebook to function. In order to check if hard drive is functioning or not, you can run a test to confirm it.

Turn OFF the Notebook and once its powered ON, keep Pressing F10 to load BIOS screen of the Notebook. In this screen under Diagnostics, run the test on hard drive and memory. Post back the results here.

Thanks for your help. I removed and reinstalled the gard drive and it stil doesnt recognize. It appears the hard drive is toast. this is very disconcerting because I'll bet we havent logged even a hundred hours since we purchased it. About how much is a new HD and then dont I need to buy windows again too?

Been having the same problem myself, it self fixes after a Factory Restore (sometimes it won't let me load that, but occasionally it does). I Installed a new copy of Windows 7 and it has fixed again but not sure if this is temporary or not.

Did you ever fix this? If so how, please give suggestions so I can try to fix mine.